


In Spaces Between (we live)

by oppisum



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Domestic Fluff, Established Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Food is People, Multi, Murder Family, Sharing a Bed, Slow Build, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Virginity, and everyone knows, first time ot3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-07-15 20:01:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7236463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppisum/pseuds/oppisum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love story in shared spaces and shared beds and the spaces in between.</p><p>Abigail knows they love her. She knows it in the blood on Hannibal’s hands and the blood in Will’s mind and the blood on her name. But they don’t want her like that, not when they have each other, and some days their casually intimate touches leave her feeling like she’s watching another life  through a glass wall.</p><p>
  <i>Or, in which Abigaile can’t sleep and finds her way into Will and Hannibal’s bed.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time is nearly an accident.

When Abigail jerks awake, her nightmare clings to the edges of her mind, coloring her perception with unreality. Her hand finds the scarf she wears even at night, the scar it hides.

The wound hasn’t reopened.

Despite everything, her dream was only a dream. Not a memory, not a premonition. Even knowing that, she also knows she won’t get back to sleep. This house is her home, but right now, she doesn’t think she can take the absurdly high threadcount sheets against her burning skin, can’t handle the soothing glow of the streetlight through her window that reminds her she’s in an upperclass Baltimore neighborhood.

It all feels too much like a dream.

She slides out of bed, feet meeting the hardwood soundlessly. She straightens her cream nightgown-- always cream; never white. White is purity; white always shows blood.

She considers going downstairs to make tea like she does most bad nights, but the dream unsettles her. She’s dreamed of Will killing her before, dreamed of him in the place of her father, killing her out of a twisted love. But she’s never dreamed of him killing her out of hatred before tonight. That more than the dream of her own demise is what disturbs her.

The image of Will sneering at her, telling her that she’s nothing more than a dramatic girl, telling her that she never meant anything to him, to them. She dreamt of him telling her she was nothing but a wedge between he and Hannibal. And oh, did she think he hadn’t seen her looking, hadn’t seen the way her eyes track Hannibal’s skilled hands, eyes dark and wanting?

She’d wanted to say no. She’d wanted say it wasn’t like that. Hadn’t he seen her looking at him also, watching the way love and destress play like an arthouse film over his face? She wanted to say she wanted him, too.

His knife had interrupted her before she could say it.

If she wasn’t so shaken-- wasn’t shaking so hard-- she’d laugh. It’s such a domestic fear, this fear that she might come between the two people she loves most. Abigail knows they love her. She knows it in the blood on Hannibal’s hands and the blood in Will’s mind and the blood on her name. But they don’t want her like that, not when they have each other, and some days watching their casually intimate touches leaves her feeling like she’s watching another life  through a glass wall.

She only realizes her feet have ghosted her down the hall without her permission when she looks up at door to Will and Hannibal’s room. She glances back toward her own room, like maybe she’ll still see a shadow of herself standing there. She doesn’t, of course.

Abigail’s teeth gnaw at her lip. Of all the people to wake in the night, she’s probably picked the two worst; one a deadly killer, the other a walking PTSD case. Still, she opens the door with one hand braced on the wood as she turns the handle to keep it from making a sound. But of course, it’s only force of habit. There are no squeaking doors in Hannibal’s house.

She only wants to see them, she tells herself. They won’t even know.

But then she’s standing at the edge of their king sized bed, watching the way the night casts their faces in blue shadow. Hannibal has an arm loosely slung around Will’s waist, nose pressed into the hair at his temple. The soft curve of Will’s jaw is more pronounced in this lighting, his hair like an abstract shadow. It makes him look prettier, younger. Or maybe just look his age.

By contrast, Hannibal looks older when painted by the night. He shaves in the morning, she knows, and his stubble stands out among the shadows. His hair fans on the pillow, free of its usual gel. Abigail’s never really considered either of their ages-- rarely in conjunction to her and never in conjunction to each other.

But Hannibal is a full decade older than his lover, maybe more. She doesn’t actually know his age, just knows that he’s old enough to have grown up under communism and lived with it into his twenties. It’s the only frame of reference she has for his life before her.

That makes him around thirty years her senior, and for a moment the thought makes her world tilt. That, or it rocks her perception of it.

Hannibal is older than her father was; Will is nearly her mother’s exact age, give a month and a half.

It doesn’t stop her from wanting them in any way she can have them. The want pulls like an obsession in her chest. That scares her more than the thought of what they are, what both of them are. What she is.

They’re killers, she knows, but so is she. There's blood on their hands, literal and metaphorical. She’s seen Will scour under his nails until his own blood blotted out the crusted red he scrubbed. She’s seen Hannibal burn bloodstained clothes worth more than her entire wardrobe in the library fireplace, alongside cedar logs to mask the smell.

She knows what she eats at the dining room table, in the mornings at the kitchen counter. Hannibal never had to tell her. She knew as soon as his food passed her lips the first time, and he knows that she knows.

She doesn’t know how long she stands there watching them. She doesn’t make a sound, she knows. She’s too good of a hunter. But something must alert Hannibal to a presence, because he sits up in one smooth motion, hand reaching for something under the pillow. It’s a knife, not a gun, she’s sure. In this close of quarters, his aim throwing would be just a good as his shooting. Maybe better.

His eyes focus on her through the dark, and his hand withdraws from under the pillow.

“Abigal,” he says. He has this way of putting so much weight into her name. It makes a shiver run up her spine. “What is wrong?”

He asks it so confidently, like there must be something big wrong for her to show up in their room in the dead of night, and it makes her feel foolish.

“I--” Her voice breaks, and she tries again. “Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

And maybe that would scare anyone else, waking to a killer telling you to go back to sleep, but she knows that’s not the reason Hannibal says, “If you’re standing here, it is not nothing.”

Before she can compose an answer that doesn’t make her sound like a lost child, Will stirs beside his partner. “Hannibal?” He props himself on one elbow and rubs at his eyes. He squints at her in confusion that quickly morphs into concern. “Abigail? What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

Something about the open fear in his eyes pulls the words out of her before she can think better of it. “I had a nightmare. A bad one.”

It doesn’t surprise her when Will’s face crumples in worry. It does, however, take her off guard when Hannibal’s brow furrows. It’s disconcerting to see such a human expression on him when it’s not afixed for show. Even around the house when it’s just the three of them, he always keeps some vestiges of his impassive calm cloaked around him.

The unfiltered expression, however brief, makes her wonder if this is what Will gets to see late at night in the privacy of this room. It makes her long for that, too.

Hannibal flicks his fingers in a beckoning gesture. She walks to his side of the bed, stopping just short of touching the mattress, unsure what he wants. Will watches them, clearly just as confused.

“Come,” Hannibal says. He takes her hand and pulls until she’s kneeling on the bed. There’s no disruption in the memory foam mattress as she moves, no childish bounce. It’s only when she’s guided to the spot between the two men, kneeling awkwardly, that she realizes what’s happening.

She feels six years old again, fleeing to her parents’ room because she’s had a nightmare. She’s six, and her mom is helping her scrabl onto their saggy queen sized mattress to sleep between her parents. “Go back to sleep,” her mother had said once she was situated.

“Sleep,” Hannibal says, and like that he’s touched another part of her childhood without meaning to. He presses a hand to her shoulder until she’s lying in the space between he and Will. She burrows under the covers with less grace than she would like, uncovering both men in the process.

Will, if his expression is anything to go by, is as bemused as she is.

Abigail lays on her back with her arms and legs tight to her body, her head safely in the valley between their two pillows. It’s not that the bed isn’t big enough for all three of them; more that she’s old enough to know that she doesn’t belong here, and that maybe hurts a little.

But if she doesn’t belong, no one told Hanibal that. Or if they did, he ignored it just as he ignores all of society's more banal rules.

He edges closer until their shoulders press together, until her feet brush the silk of his pajama pants. He lays back down on his side and puts an arm around her waist. The position nearly mirrors the way he held Will before, except where their bodies had been pressed in an unbroken line, his hips are carefully canted so as not to touch her.

It’s like this sort of physical affection is the only way he knows how to genuinely comfort, and maybe it is. Maybe he never truly sought to comfort until he met Will, until he learned how his touch could stave off Will’s nightmares even as his hands crafted them.

Will appears unbothered by the small intimacy between his lover and his ward, so unlike the Will of her nightmare. His lips curl into a soft smile as she slowly relaxes in Hannibal’s embrace.

“You okay with this?” Will asks. His head turns on the pillow to face her more fully, and they’re so close she can feel his breath on her cheek. His eyes hold hers. She’s never had the chance to notice how bright they are straight on, and she wonders if his sudden ease with eye contact is anything like Hannibal’s unguarded expressions.

Will’s chest is bare, and Abigail guesses that he’s only wearing boxers like the few times their nighttime wanderings have crossed. She eases her foot out until it brushes his leg, and she’s met with coarse hair and bare skin.

“Yeah,” she says. It’s not quite a lie.

She hopes Hannibal doesn’t notice the way her heart pounds in her chest, but she knows it’s a futile hope.

Will reaches towards her, but stops just shy of touching her forehead. She knows Will, knows he doesn’t want to overstep, knows he doesn’t know what is acceptable. It makes her want to laugh. She’s just been pulled into the bed of two grown men she’s not related to, and Will is worried he’ll cross the line by brushing her hair out of her eyes. She understands, though; Will knows his compass for human interactions doesn’t point north.

She leans towards his hand until his palm rests against the crown of her head. His answering smile is soft, and he scratches his fingers in her hair.

She closes her eyes and breathes in the scent of family. Will and Hannibal’s mingled scents surround her like a physical press, and it strikes her unexpectedly. She’s never really thought about the fact that they’re both men. Of all the factors in their lives, that seemed like the least relevant. But now, breathing them in, there’s no trace of anything feminine in their bed. The smells are boldly masculine-- Hannibal's cologne, the aftershave he pressed upon Will, the utilitarian soap they share,  _ them _ .

Abbigail is willing to bet that Will’s habits have rubbed off on Hannibal and that the sheets haven’t been changed since the last time they had sex.

It doesn’t bother her. Far from it as warmth pools in her stomach. She opens her eyes again. She can’t let thoughts like that creep in, not now. Not with Will’s fingers in her hair and Hannibal's chest to her back. Not when they’ve let her into their bed to comfort her; it feels like a betrayal.

And Hannibal would know. She knows he’d be able to scent even the faintest trace of her arousal. It’s a constant paranoia of hers: that Will will read her desires, that Hannibal will smell them.

“Try to sleep,” Hannibal murmurs in her ear.

Will moves his head close enough that their hair blends together against the white pillow. He takes her hand and laces their fingers together. He looks like he wants to move as close as Hannibal, but something stops him. Propriety, she thinks, until he says, “I sweat,” by way of explanation

That didn’t seem to be stopping Hannibal, but Abigail doesn’t point that out.

The world is drifting out of focus. As much as she wants to stay awake and make this memory last, sleep is overtaking her. 

“Sleep.” Hannibal breathes the word against her skin, and who is she to protest. With bloodstained hands holding her on both sides, Abbigail falls asleep feeling safer than she has since her world crashed down around her at fifteen.

~*~

When she wakes, Hannibal is gone and Will is still asleep in the bed next to her.

True to his word, Will sleep sweats.

A lot.

Somehow, even with her face jammed into his ribcage and her nose perilously close to his armpit, Abigail doesn’t care. They’ve drifted together like magnets in Hannibal’s absence. He has an arm slung around her shoulder, lying on his back while she borrows against his chest.

She keeps her breathing even so the shift doesn’t wake him and lets herself enjoy the moment, damp though it may be. He’s warm and solid next to her, and it’s unlike anything she’s ever experienced. She wants to pretend this intimacy is something she gets to keep, but she can’t. Not when her thoughts inevitably creep towards Hannibal.

She extricates herself from Will’s embrace as carefully as she can. Will doesn’t wake, merely turns his head to the side and snuffles into the pillow. There’s a lot to be said for memory foam mattresses, she thinks.

She pads out of the bedroom and down the hall, walking on the balls of her feet out of habit. She’s begun watching how Hannibal moves so silently, studying and mimicking it. Will tells her having two ghosts in the house is going to give him a heart attack one of these days.

Abigail thinks that if ghosts exist, there’s a lot more than two ghosts in this house.

She pauses at the foot of the stairs, listening. No sound comes from the kitchen, so she turns towards the library. As expected, Hannibal is seated at the heavy wooden desk, papers and books spread out before him. His laptop sits off to one side, incongruous to everything else in the book-lined room.

He looks up as she enters, and the smile she receives is warm, genuine, even if it’s barely more than a twitch of the lips.

She thinks she’s starting to learn the difference between his real smiles and his mask. And this, this is the same smile he gives Will when he’s done something particularly endearing or troublesome.

“You’re up early for a Saturday,” she says, making her way to stand by his chair. The words are barely more than a whisper in the soft morning light.

“I find it easier to wake at my usual time rather than break my routine.” Hannibal’s tone matches her own.

Abigail pulls a face. “Does that mean you guys are having sex any Saturday when you’re not up?”

He gives her a disapproving look that she suspects would put her on the menu if she was anyone else. Still, he says, “Not always, but often.”

She scrunches her toes against the ornate rug and looks down. “Thank you-- for last night.”

His face relaxes again. “You are welcome in our bed whenever you wish,” he says. “I do not mind, and I know Will would not.”

Memories of the night before replay themselves, colored by her desire for the men with whom she shares a home. She remembers the warmth in her gut, the way their innocent touches had made her heart race.

She bites her lip. “That seems-- inadvisable.”

Hannibal tilts is head, the movement more bird-like than a human. This early, it seems his human facade isn’t in place yet. “Because of your attractions towards us?” he asks, emphasizing the ‘us’.

“What?” It comes out as a squawk, the loudest sound the house has heard all morning, and she winces.

“I am not willfully blind, my dear. I have known for some time, and it makes no difference,” Hannibal sooths. “Though Will and I may be your caregivers in some capacities, we are not your parents, nor are we even suitable replacements.”

“Well, I’m not exactly a suitable child, so it’s fine,” she forces out. “Does Will know?”

“No, he is unaware,” Hannibal says. He reaches out and lays his hand over hers where it rests on the edge of his desk, stroking the vein there with his thumb. “I thought it rather rude to share your secrets without your consent.”

Abigail smiles thin and tight lipped. “Good. He wouldn’t take it well.”

“I am unsure how he would take the information. He tries very hard to view you as a daughter, and I believe the fact that he does not succeed in the effort bothers him.”

She doesn’t know what to make of that information, so she keeps quiet. She knows that Hannibal uses truth as a weapon even at the most personal of times, like he’s done it for so long he doesn’t know how to stop. The best response she’s found is to ignore it.

“It is perfectly alright,” he continues after a moment. “Your feeling towards us, individually or in conjunction, are not a problem.”

“Aren’t you going to say it’s natural for for a young girl to get overly attached to people who show her affection?” She can’t help the sneer in her voice.

“I would not belittle you so,” he says, holding her gaze. “You have been through far too much to be treated as any other girl. In lives like ours, it is the utmost hypocrisy to call out unhealthy tendencies.”

She swallows hard. “You think it’s unhealthy?”

“I would not call it healthy, no. But neither would I condemn you for it.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable?” she asks.

“Never,” he says, and she thinks he means it. He extends a hand towards her, and she takes it, lets herself be pulled into a hug. She’s too experienced with serial killers to be surprised at how affectionate he is. “As I say, you are always welcome in our bed.”


	2. Chapter 2

The second time is less of an accident.

She finds herself at their bedside after a middling nightmare. Nothing she would be too upset about, usually; just her father killing her. Again. But she wants the excuse, wants to see if Hannibal meant his offer.

So, she stares down at Will’s sleeping form, unsure what to do, and bites her lip. Just climbing into bed seems like a good way to get someone injured, likely her, and as much as she wants to see what would happen, she doesn’t want to lose her invitation into their private space.

Hannibal and Will face opposite directions tonight, bodies barely touching over the vast expanse of bed. She reaches out and brushes her hand along Will’s shoulder. When that gets no response, she presses down harder.

Will wakes with a hiss of indrawn breath and a shudder. His hand strikes out, surprisingly fast, to clamp around her wrist.

She knows she’ll have bruises in the morning, and the thought makes her oddly happy.

“It’s me,” she whispers.

His grip loosens. “Abbs?” he asks, his nickname for her ever since he realized she hates being called Abby.

“Yeah. Can I get in bed?”

Instead of pulling up his legs to giver her room like she expects, he scoots wordlessly to the middle of the bed. She considers the space on the edge of the bed for only a moment before climbing up and burrowing under the covers.

They lay in silence for a long minute, resolutely not touching, before she gets sick of it. She slides closer to Will, effectively sandwiching him between her body and Hannibal’s. He gives a huff that might be a laugh. His arm snakes around her middle, and he warns, “I mean it, I sweat.”

“I don’t care,” she says, and she means it, too. She thinks she understands now why Hannibal holds him so close, headless of the sweat. There’s a tenderness to his touch, a softness that belies all that his hands are capable of.

Hannibal never stirs throughout their exchange, and Abigail suspects he’s faking, listening the entire time. He’s a manipulative bastard; she thinks it with the same affection that people call their cats assholes.

Will must guess as much, too, because he barely bothers to whisper when he says, “Why do you wear this at night?” He smooths the fabric of her scarf to illustrate what he means.

She swallows hard and shrugs like she doesn’t care. “The scar isn’t nice to look at. I thought-- well, Hannibal likes beautiful things.”

In the dark, she can just make out the way Will quirks an eyebrow at that. “You might have noticed by now, but Hannibal’s sense of aesthetic beauty is a bit-- off,” he says. “I doubt he would mind.”

She shrugs again and looks away from his face, towards the ceiling. “It would probably bother you. Stuff like that tends to.”

Will seems taken aback by that answer. “It wouldn’t,” he promises. 

As if to prove it, his fingers snake under her scarf, following the length of it until they find the knot at the back. He deftly works it undone one-handed. He hesitates only long enough to get her nod of reluctant permission before pulling it away and letting it fall over the edge of the bed.

Abigail feels suddenly bare, lying here with her savior, her lifeline, her friend staring down at the ugly gash on her neck. She makes to pull the covers up to her chin, but Will’s hand stays the movement.

“Don’t,” he says. “Let me see.”

And god, there are so many other connotations to that phrase, that tone, that she knows Will doesn’t intend, but it still sends a rush of heat through her gut. She presses her thighs tighter together even as she leans her head back on the pillow to bare her throat.

The tips of Will’s fingers skate up the length of her neck, then follows the scar around the curve of it. He takes in the marred skin with a look of reverence in his eyes. He traces the jagged, raised line of it unflinchingly, and for the first time the scar feels like something more than a brand placed on her by her father, forever marking her as his.

As if hearing her train of thought, Will’s breath ghosts over her ear. “It means you survived,” he whispers. “It means you found a way to keep living.”

Abbigail can’t help the next words that fall from her lips. “It also means that I’m broken.”

Will wets his lips, hesitant, before saying, “Would it scare you if I said I find it beautiful?”

“No,” she says. She thinks that if he keeps looking at her like that, maybe she’ll come to see it that way, too, one day.

He continues his caress of her scar in silence, staring down at her from where he lays on his side. Even as his body shifts closer, she reminds herself that this is Will. Will doesn’t intend this to come off as sexual or as any sort of advance. Her Will would be a guilty, babbling wreck if he found himself attracted to her.

That thought makes her smile. She shifts closer until she feels the solid line of his body from shoulder to toes. He gives off heat like a furnace, like one of his dogs asleep downstairs in the utility room. She lets her feet curl around his ankle, brushing against the coarse hair and warmth she finds there, and he startles slightly.

“Cold feet,” he says.

She starts to pull away again, but his larger feet catch hers. They tangle around her own, warming and reassuring. She sighs and buries her face against his chest.

“You have tiny feet,” he comments.

“I know. It’s a curse,” she says with affected longsuffering. “Nice shoes never come in anything smaller than a size six.”

He chuckles, warm and low and so much more open than the Will Graham of the daylight. She thinks that there must be something magic about this place, this bed, the way it breaks down Will and Hannibal’s walls so easily. She never wants to leave it.

She scoots impossibly closer to Will, into the embrace of his arm and the gentle touch of his fingers. She moves closer until she can feel the curve of his hip against her side and--

Her thoughts grind to a halt, and she forces her breathing to stay even. She can feel the plump line of his half-hard cock against her upper thigh.

At least, she’s pretty sure that’s half-hard. It makes her feel abruptly naive. She’s killed, but she’s not even sure how to tell what state of arousal a man is in.

She doesn’t really have any frame of reference for this; her sheltered upbringing made sure of that. Oh, she’s done her research now that she’s got her own tablet on Hannibal’s wi-fi rather than her father’s closely guarded laptop. But that means very little in practice.

She’d heard other girls on the cross country team talk about it as they ran laps in the isolation of the long trail. “A stiff breeze will get a guy hard,” she heard one girl say to another. “Don’t take it personally.”

So, she tells herself it’s the warmth and the proximity to his lover that does it.

Still, she lets herself bask in the feel of it for a moment, the intimacy that isn’t hers to take. She wants this so badly it’s a physical ache, but she also knows that she could never hurt Hannibal by taking it. Not that Will would ever give it, not when he was so obviously, painfully in love with his partner.

The walls suddenly feel like they’re caving in on her, like she’s shut out of the life she truly longs for. She tries to remind herself that what she has is more than enough, that the understanding and affection they give her is more than enough, but she doesn’t delude herself into believing she’ll find someone to love her the way they love each other.

She can never have that, she knows. She’ll never find someone who can know the truth, never be able to hold someone who loves her because of the bloodstains on her hands, not just in spite of them. This, here in Will and Hannibal’s bed, is as close as she’ll ever get.

She fights back tears and rolls so she’s on her side facing into Will’s chest, his arm supporting her neck. She presses her face into his collarbone and slings an arm around his middle, winding their legs more securely. She can still feel his sleepy cock against her, and even as that makes the tears threaten to overflow, she knows he’s noticed this time.

He stiffens beside her and makes to move his hips back, to put space between them, mumbling, “Sorry, I’m so sorry. It’s not-- just ignore it. God, I’m sor--”

He breaks off as a warm tear splashes onto his bicep.

“Abigail?” he questions.

She shakes her head, unable to respond coherently, and tries not to let the tears progress into sobs.

Will has never seen her cry, not really. Not when it’s not for show. He’s at a loss for what to do, she knows. So, she gives him a clue by squeezing the arm around his waist tighter.

He gets the message. He wraps both arms around her and pulls her as close as he can, hugging her just a bit too tight. It’s nice. It’s warm and reassuring and everything she needs in that moment.

She tries not to think about the way her father hugged her to him after their first real hunt together, their first murder. She tries not to think about the way he’d comforted her tears with a strong hug and she soft reassurance that the girl would be honored, that Abbigail would be safe, always.

Will is not her father. He’s something more, something greater. Maybe she can’t have him or Hannibal in all the ways she wants, but she has them in the ways that matter.

She has this.

“Thank you,” she chokes out.

He doesn’t say anything in reply, just hugs her tighter.

If he’s bothered by his cock pressed against her, he doesn’t say anything this time.

It’s not until she’s drifting off to sleep that she thinks that maybe it was because her, because of her scar.

~*~

When Abigail wakes the next morning, Hannibal is gone again, but Will is already awake. He’s propped up in bed next to her, a look of worry knitting his brow as he stares down at where her face is pressed to his hip, his hand atop her head.

Someone has tucked a fluffy knit blanket around her, and even if she knows she can’t, all she wants to do is snuggle in it. She thinks she missed blankets most while she was at Port Haven-- real blankets, not sterile hospital blankets with no history, no care. She even came to miss the scratchy afghans she’d hated growing up, and she’d told Hannibal as much.

On his next visit, he brought her a fluffy white blanket more luxurious than anything she’d ever felt. She’d been on the verge of giving it back when she’d caught the scent barely clinging to it. It smelt of Hannibal’s house and Will’s shampoo and  _ them _ . He’d brought one of  _ their _ blankets rather than going out and buying a new one, and somehow that made all the difference.

She’d clung to the blanket for the remainder of her time at Port Have as a reminder of what awaited her once she got out.

She rolls over just enough to meet Will’s gaze and smiles a lazy smile. “Good morning.”

Will’s eyes dart away, then back down to her sleep-slack face still red and puffy from last night’s tears. “Morning,” he says, and there’s tension in the word.

She knows she’s not going to get away without talking about this. She pushes herself up so she’s leaning against the headboard next to him. She leans her head on his shoulder, reluctant and too half-asleep to break contact just yet.

“Abbs,” he says. “I-- I know maybe you don’t want to talk to me about last night, but whatever’s wrong, you should at least talk to Hannibal.”

“It’s not important,” she says. “Just a case of over-emotional teenage girl syndrome”

Will leans his cheek against her head. “Liar.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But it really doesn’t matter. It’s not anything you did, don’t worry.”

She reaches up unthinkingly to touch her scar, the memory of his tender touches the night before bringing a smile to her face.

He catches her hand and brings it up to examine. A purpleing bruises circle her wrist like violent bangles. Will hesitates for a moment before wrapping his fingers lightly around the imprint.

They fit perfectly.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, tracing the ring of bruises.

“Don’t worry about it,” Abbigail dismisses.

Will’s face is twisted in something between regret and nausea. “I hurt you.”

“No, really,” she insists. “Don’t worry about it. I like it.”

That last part slips out without her permission, but she thinks maybe he’ll let it slide. They’re all fucked up around here.

He’s quiet for a minute more, tracing the mark with two fingers in silent contemplation.

“Abbs, about last night,” he starts, then stops to wet his lips nervously. “About-- about...”

“About the fact that you had an erection after petting my scar,” she says evenly. Her heart threatens to pound out of her chest. She’s surprised he can’t hear it.

Will sucks in a breath so abruptly that he starts coughing. He releases her wrist like he’s been burned, and Abigail lets him suffer for it, doesn’t say anything as the coughing fit subsided, until he says, “Yeah,” in a choked voice.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says again. “Look, I know it’s not-- personal, alright? I know it’s not about me.”

He looks pained, but she forges ahead. “Maybe it was even about the scar-- Don’t give me that look, I don’t know what goes on in that head of yours-- but even if it was, that’s not the same as it being about me, not really.”

He nods, once, in a jerky movement, and she knows she won’t get to know if it really was about the scar. But then, the guilty slouch of his shoulders is as good as an admission.

Abbigail rolls off the bed from Hannibal’s side. She can see Will closing off, shifting into the mindset that he’s some sort of father figure to her, that he has to protect her. She doesn’t want to put up with it just now, not after last night. She makes her way towards the door without a word, and Will’s face looks like unbidden words are threatening to crawl their way out of his throat.

“One bit of advice?” She stops in the doorway to look back at him where he still sits on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched in guilt. “Tell Hannibal. Talk to him about it. You know as well as I do that he was only faking sleep, and if you don’t mention it, he might think you’re keeping things from him. He acts all cool and collected, but he’s still human, and he can have relationship paranoias like any other human.”

She doesn’t wait for him to stop making a fish face at her before she stalks off back to her own room to get dressed for the day.

Three days later, she comes home to an empty house to find a box resting on her bed. It’s matt black and tied with elenat gold string. When she carefully unties it and removes the lid, she finds a beautiful pair of burgundy-brown oxfords and a note in Hannibal’s immaculate script.

_ Thank you. _

_ ~H _

When she slips on the shoes, they’re a perfect size five and a half.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hannibal?” Abigail stalls in the door to the kitchen, bare feet shuffling against the cold tile.

Hannibal looks up, hands never ceasing in their rhythmic chopping of carrots.

“How may I help you, my dear?” he says, and a blush rises in her cheeks. His casual use of endearments will probably never stop surprising Abigail. At least, she hopes not.

She bites her lip, then blurts, “Is Will alright?”

She starts to explain what she means, how Will is making even less eye contact with her than usual, how he jumps like he’s been burned any time she brushes past him in the hall, how she’s found him watching her speculatively more than once.

But Hannibal seems to understand, because before she can elaborate, he says, “Our dear Will is coming to terms with several things weighing on his mind. Nothing that would endanger his mind, I assure you,” he adds when she her eyes widen in concern. “There are merely some aspects of his personal life-- our lives together-- which he is grappling with.”

“Oh,” Abigail says, unsure what else to say. She tries to phrase her next question as tactfully as possible without stepping over their invisible line. “Is he… having a work-home balance problem?”

It’s the best way she can think to put it-- this niggling fear that Will’s more upright nature might put strain on their makeshift family. The words elicit a warm chuckle from Hannibal.

“Nothing of the sort, I promise. No matter his moral qualms, he could never betray us, especially not you. He would never willingly put you under that level of scrutiny again,” he says, a secret smile playing at the edge of his eyes. “Had our lives played out differently, he may very well have been capable of turning on me, but he will not turn his back on the life we have built together now, particularly not now that you are in it.”

There’s a long pause, and Abigail looks down at the granite counter, thoughts swirling.

As if sensing where the darker ones might lead, Hannibal preempts, “You are not a bargaining chip, my dear Abigail. You were not brought into our lives as a means of binding Will to me. I fear it inevitable that one day our peace will be disturbed, but it will not be at Will’s hands. When that time comes, arrangements will have been made.”

When they get caught, he means.

She nods, looking down to trace invisible patterns into the counter with her index finger.

Will and Hannibal bought this house together shortly before she was released from Port Haven into their care a year ago. She emerged from her isolation to find a house that felt more like home than Hannibal’s opulent house or Will’s isolated shack.

The house is still close enough to Baltimore for Hannibal’s practice but far enough into the suburbs that it sits undisturbed on seven acres of land protected by a shroud of trees. The first time Will’s dogs ran to greet her when she opened the front door, suitcase at her side, a wave of _home_ hit her.

She house had clearly been picked and redesigned with both of them in mind, she noticed immediately. The floors are scratch resistant bamboo, elegant and expensive enough to suite Hannibal’s taste, but tough enough to withstand Will’s work boots and heard of dogs. The elegance of every bathroom artfully disguises their nearly industrial functionality. All bathrooms save the downstairs bathroom guests gravitate towards have drains recessed into the heated floors and powerful sprayers in the shower that stretch far past the confines of the shower tray.

The utility room was large enough to house not only an industrial washer and dryer-- the better to remove the bloodstains, she thinks-- but also a half-dozen dog beds in various sizes. The floor is even heated, and she knows it’s Hannibal’s way of making up for his edict that the dogs do not sleep in their bed at night. Dog food dispensers are mounted to one wall next to a rack of leashes, dispensing various kinds of dog food she suspects is far more expensive than the dogs ever ate before.

In this house, with her not-actually parental figures, Abigail feels more at peace than she can ever remember. There’s no fear, no anxiety about the future-- just the steady assurance that Hannibal will take care of them and they him in turn.

“What’re you making?” Abigail asks, coming around the counter to peer around him. She sees peas and chopped celery to go with the carrots.

“Pot pie,” Hannibal says. “You mentioned how much you like the dish some time ago, and I thought to try my own variation.”

By variation, she knows he means that it’s not _chicken_ pot pie. Still, she makes a pleased, excited noise.

The kitchen is nearly indistinguishable from that of Hannibal's old house, save a breakfast nook and more comfortable seating along the island bar. It’s industrial, utilitarian, except in all the spots it’s not, where Hannibal's real personality slips through if you know where to look. It slips through in a charcoal art reproduction on the wall she’s pretty sure he drew himself and expensive knifes shamelessly on display.

At the front of the house, there’s a study lined with hardwood bookshelves that hold Hannibal’s priceless manuscripts alongside Will’s battered pulp paperbacks. Opposite it stands a formal sitting room free of dog hair where Hannibal entertains guests. The sofas are the ornate, uncomfortable kind that Abigail is still secretly afraid to sit on.

She’d wondered why fancy couches always have to be so damn uncomfortable until she watched Frederick Chilton shift uncomfortably on the hard edge of one. Then she understood-- any guest brought to this room is not intended to stay long.

At the back of the house is the actual living room where only she, Will, and Hannibal ever sprawl. Select friends of Will and Hannibal, _real_ friends if it can be said they have such things, are occasionally led back to this room-- Beverly Katz and Alana Bloom. Here, glass shelves hold Blu-Rays and CDs, and the chairs and couches face the TV as they threaten to suck their occupants down into blissful repose.

This is their room, no one else's except those they willingly let in. This is the room where they’re real, where they’re family, no matter how unconventional. Taboo desires and brutal ties of blood bind them irrevocably. Despite knowing that there’s no escape from their domestic snare except through death, she’s not afraid.

In fact, she can never remember feeling more alive.

It makes her feel manic, like she could do anything with Will and Hannibal at her side, and she has to force calm over herself.

She wonders if Will has been party to any of Hannibal’s kills--

If she will be.

Abigail clears her throat and forces herself to hold Hannibal’s amber gaze. “And when the time comes for our peace to be disturbed, will I be any more culpable than I am now?”

The smile that spreads across Hannibal’s lips somehow manages to be both predatory and proud. “Only if you wish to be. I will never force the issue.”

“You don’t have to force it,” she says softly. “I-- I want to. I miss the hunt.”

“Then a hunt you shall have,” he says simply.

The smile that blooms across her lips is a mirror of his own-- predatory and anticipatory.

~*~

When Abigail first arrived to the house after Port Haven, she stalled in the foyer with bags and dogs scattered around her. She’d never lived anywhere except the Minnesota house, and to emerge into the world of a settles couple felt like some kind of intrusion.

Before she had a chance to feel more like she was intruding on Hannibal and Will’s domestic space, Hannibal had directed her to an upstairs room where he said the rest of her things had already been placed. He’d given her space, trusting that she could find the room-- _her_ room-- on her own.

She’d been on the verge of deciding that this whole living arrangement was a bad idea when she’d pushed the heavy wooden door open and froze in her tracks.

The room left her with no doubt the house had been bought with all three of them in mind. There were accommodations for her, purposeful and premeditated. A scarf rack mounted next to her bedroom door; walls painted in warm terracotta tones far removed from the dark wood paneling from her old home; little details that stole her breath with the consideration put into them.

A painfully familiar white blanket already lay folded over the end of her bed.

Will and Hannibal had chosen this house with her in mind, too.

They meant for her to be a part of their lives, not as a temporary rest stop on her journey, but as a permanent fixture.

That thought had sent such a wave of emotion rushing through her that she’d had to sit down in the middle of the floor.

Will had found her like that some indefinite amount of time later. He didn’t say anything when he pushed open the door with a perfunctory knock, just hesitated for a moment before joining her on the floor. They sat like that for a long time pressed shoulder to shoulder. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her forehead on his arm, and even if he didn’t know what to do, he held her back and let that be enough.

~*~

The pot pie is delicious.

After dinner she excuses herself to take a shower, which turns into taking a steaming bath when she sees the elaborate bath bombs someone-- Hannibal, by their subtle smell-- has placed in a dish on her bathroom counter.

She runs the water too hot when she fills the clawfoot tub, watches at the bath bomb turns the water inks black when it sinks under the surface. She fishes a box of long matches and a prayer candle from a drawer. She wasn’t raised Catholic, wasn’t even really raised Christian, but when she saw the candle of St. Jude in a store, she couldn’t resist. Even if she doesn’t know how to believe, maybe the patron saint of lost causes could offer some protection.

She’s not looking for forgiveness.

The match smells delicious when she strikes it, and she lets it burn almost all the way down to her fingers before flicking it out.

The water is nearly scalding when she sinks into it, like it can scour the sins away from her skin. She thinks of perdition as her hair fans out around her, thinks of an afterlife she doubts she believes in. It seems fitting that her namesake was a Salem witch, as if predestination ruled that she would follow in dark footsteps.

She wonders at times like this, when her thoughts spiral out around her dark as ash, if she’s actually crazy.

She thinks she might not notice if she was in this house, with its secrets and death and peace.

Time doesn’t pass in the bathroom, but the water does grow cool around her as the candle flickers. A light knock is the only real sign that she might have been lost in her head for too long.

“Come in,” Abigail says.

Hannibal appears around the door, shutting it soundlessly back behind him. She has a moment where she knows she should feel self-conscious or awkward-- that the old her would have-- with him in the room, but the feelings never come. The murky obsidian black of the water shrouds most of her body, and even without it, she’s not concerned.

“I wished to let you know that Will and I are going to bed,” he says. “I did not want you to return downstairs only to find yourself alone.”

Abigail sits up slightly in the water, just enough that the tops of her breasts are exposed. “How long have I been in here?”

“Nearing an hour and a half.”

“Oh god,” she says, “I’m going to be a prune. I haven’t even washed my hair yet.”

Hannibal lowers himself to perch neatly on the edge of the tub. He rolls up the sleeves of his silk pajamas and takes her bottle of shampoo from the tile floor. “May I?”

Abigal can only nod mutely. She turns sideways in the tub to her back is to him, knees pulled to her chest. Hannibal’s fingers gently massage shampoo across her scalp, careful not to scrunch her hair in a way she never is. His hands are surprisingly warm when they cup the side of her neck, nails scratching at the base of her hairline.

She can’t remember the last time someone else washed her hair. She thinks maybe it was her mom, some indeterminate time ago.

Hannibal’s surgeon hands are so skilled that only the image of wet silk keeps her from leaning back into his chest. He reaches to take down the sprayer head and tests the water temperature on his wrist before letting it cascade over her. Once her hair is free of soap, she leans down to drain the water before standing.

He holds a towel open for her to step into. She hesitates only momentarily before rising to her full height in what’s left of the bath water. She water runs down her bare body in rivulets, and this time she does feel exposed as Hannibal’s eyes take her in. There’s nothing lascivious to it, nothing that makes her uncomfortable, just careful cataloging of her figure before he wraps the towel around her.

Still, his gaze sends a shiver up her spine and warmth into her belly.

“Goodnight, my dear,” Hannibal says, like he senses that lingering any longer would be a step too far.

“Goodnight,” she says, and the click of the bathroom door is like a final answer.

She knows she should put on her clothes and go to bed, but _should_ plays very little role in her life these days. She doesn’t repent from her sins, not any more.

Instead, she lets the towel drop to the floor around her and sits on the edge of the tub, still warm from Hannibal’s presence. She lets her legs spread and her fingers work quickly. She lets the heel of her hand provide the pressure the needs.

She doesn’t try to bask in the sensual atmosphere, doesn’t draw things out in the dim light of the bathroom. She works efficiently and brings herself off without much finesse. She doesn’t see the point when she’s alone with only her dark desires for company.

She sighs through the aftershocks, pliant and warm and unwilling to put clothes back on.

It’s nice-- not wanting to cover her neck as soon as possible.

Abigail has never had sex, but she isn’t a virgin. No one who’s been through what she has can be, not in the ways that really count. Her father had worked so hard to keep her away from boys, and she still wonders if there was something more than parental overprotectiveness that drove him to guard her purity so viciously. She doesn’t like wondering.

After his death, after the death of that life, she’d sought to destroy it. She wanted nothing more than to rid herself of what he’d fought so hard to protect. She hoped there was a hell, if for no other reason than so that Garret Jacob Hobbs could know what she’d done and disdain her for it. Or, perhaps, applaud her.

She’d still been in Port Haven when she’d done it. She’d used the handle of her hairbrush, worked herself up and gotten herself off with it. She’d been on the brink of orgasm when she’d done it, pushed it just that little bit too far.

She’s heard mixed accounts-- some girls say there’s always blood, some better informed women say there doesn’t have to be blood. Either way, she thinks she wanted there to be blood, so she had proof she’d succeeded.

She just didn’t expect there to be so much blood.

Her orgasm overrode everything; it wasn’t until she pulled it back out and was met with a rush of blood that her actions really hit her. She stared down at the bloodstain on the sterile white sheet, so much like the blood that stained Nicholas’s shirt.

She had laughed. She had laughed so long and hard that she had she had to put her arm to her face to avoid drawing the attention of the night staff. The littlest death; and so it was.

Abigail took her own virginity so no one, not her father nor any man or woman, could say they had it. Hannibal knew-- she had told him one night after a little too much wine-- and by extension, so too probably did Will. She would have the first time she wanted, free of the social stigma surrounding her hymen. She’d get to explore and be free in the knowledge that her body is _hers_.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The tick of the grandfather clock feels as solid as a heartbeat where Abigail sits in the study. She has a snifter in one hand, _Howards End_ in the other, and her feet tucked under her on the couch. Hannibal is barely three feet away at the other end, eyes trained on his sketchbook as his pencil works.

It’s their version of domesticity, a night like most save the scarf no longer wound around Abigail’s neck.

When she’d first entered the study, she seated herself on the couch with Hannibal rather than in her usual high backed chair. Hannibal’s eyes had flicked up to caress her bare scar before he stood wordlessly to pour her a glass of cognac, albeit smaller than his own.

She accepted with wordless awe that she tried to keep off her face. Hannibal had never offered her the drink, usually keeping a bottle of wine for her and nothing harder. She nodded once, wanting him to know that she understood the significance of the gesture.

He no longer considered her a child in need of his protection.

Hannibal raises his glass to his lips, and Abigail tried to watch him over her book without being detected. She suspects she fails, but she mimics his movements, trying her best to copy the elegant way he sips his cognac. A cough threatens to escape her throat at the burn of the smooth liquid, but she holds it back with sheer force of will.

The floorboards behind her creek, and she can’t hold back the small jump she gives. Will and Hannibal rarely creek floorboards, but when she looks up, Will hovers just inside the doorway.

He radiates surprise as he looks at her, but whether at the hard liquor or her lack of scarf, she doesn’t know. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants, hair still damp from his post-work shower, and he shifts his weight from foot to foot before padding into the room.

His fingers briefly brush her shoulder as he passes, too-full glass of whisky held in his other hand. When he takes a seat next to her, Abigail can read in his body language that he’s reluctantly pleased that she took his advice to leave off the scarf, even if just for a little while. Hannibal presses their shoulders together, and Will takes it was a sign to wind an arm over his lover’s shoulders, careful not to disrupt the steady scratch of his pencil.

Will doesn't immediately pick up his book from the night before, merely gazed into the fireplace with his eyes taking occasional detours to her or Hannibal. He sips his whisky fast enough that Hannibal’s lips purse in fond disapproval.

When he does finally pick up his book, Abigail takes another sip of her cognac. The fire of it emboldens her to look at him over the pages of her own. His eyes flick frantically over the text, taking in the words at a rate she can never hope to match as he pulls at his lip with his teeth.

She take another sip.

Hannibal doesn’t look up from his work, but his lips make a complicated little movement that could either be a poorly repressed smile or a smirk.

She doesn’t realize she’s been reading the same page until the words begin to blur together into a litany between sips of alcohol. She closes the book and sets it on the end table along with her empty glass, and she wonders when exactly that happened. But then, she reasons, Hannibal’s own glass is empty, as is Will’s whisky tumbler.

She feels loose and warm, and somehow in that moment it seems like the most natural thing in the world to curl sideways until her head is in Will’s lap.

His thigh tenses under her head, and Abigail has a moment to worry that she’s overstepped before he relaxes again. One of his hands moves to rest on the crown of her head. She closes her eyes and lets herself enjoy the warmth of his body. She wonders if the way her head spins lightly is the alcohol, the arousal, or some combination thereof.

Will’s fingers begin thoughtlessly playing with her hair, at first simply carding through, but as the minutes pass, their movements get more complex. He twists the strands into a loose one-handed braid, and she wonders idly where he learned to do that. It reminds her of watching movies with her head in her mom’s lap on the couch she’d hated, her mom’s fingers braiding then combing out her hair over and over again.

She knows Hannibal has to be able to smell her growing arousal. She can feel it pulsing in her abdomen, enough to steal her breath. She can’t remember ever feeling like this before because of another person, this feeling that every touch and look could send her careening over a cliff.

She opens her eyes and is unsurprised to see Hannibal looking at them with a near hungry expression.

Hannibal turns his face just enough that his nose brushes Will’s cheek. Abigail watches as he closes his eyes and breathes in his lover’s scent as it mixes with her own arousal.

“I think I shall retire to bed early,” he says, opening his eyes. Abigail watches as he stands and stows his art supplies. His palm rests for a moment on Will’s neck before he murmurs, “Goodnight,” lower and rougher than she’s accustomed to hearing.

Will nods jerkily and swallows hard. When she looks up at him from under her lashes, his eyes are no longer moving on the page. She closes her eyes and lets herself enjoy his warmth for a few minutes more, but is entirely unsurprised when Will closes his book and awkwardly mumbles, “I’m pretty tired myself. I think I might head on up, too.”

“Goodnight.” Abigail sticks her tongue out at him through a teasing grin. “Have fun.”

Will stands and stammers out a goodnight before fleeing the room.

Abigail waits exactly forty-five seconds after she hears their bedroom door click shut before slipping her hand under the night dress.

She squirms out of her panties, letting them fall to the study floor without bothering to close the door. She knows she won’t be interrupted, and if she is, she doesn’t think she’ll care. Warmth burns in her chest as well as her gut. She slips a finger inside herself and thinks how she was the one who sent Hannibal and Will upstairs to fuck.

Because she knows that’s what they’re doing. And she knows she’s the reason why.

This time she takes her time working herself up, basting in the remembered warmth of Hannibal’s look. She pictures Hannibal’s hands running over Will’s skin, smelling her arousal even as Will’s grows. She wonders if their lovemaking tonight is slow or vicious, tender or desperate.

She imagines both as she brings herself closer to the edge.

She hopes Hannibal smells her scent on the couch tomorrow, wants him to know that she knows.

As she climaxes, she pictures herself between them, worshiped and adored and accepted.

The clock chimes midnight as she comes back down to herself. It’s another few minutes before she manages to get up on shaky legs and walk to the nearest bathroom to clean herself up. She flips on the light, and squints against its brightness, harsh after the warm glow of the study.

She washes her hands, then her face, trying to shake herself out of the last of the alcohol haze. When she looks up at the mirror, face still wet, she’s not sure she recognizes herself anymore. Her jawline and cheekbones are better defined now, lacking their former roundness of youth.

She wonder, almost hysterically, what she’s doing.

She’s angling to get into the shared bed of a cannibalistic serial killer and his unstable FBI boyfriend. She’s living in the lap of luxury with no idea where she’s going in life or what she wants other than to be with these men for the rest of her life.

Her knees give out, and she has to sit on the tile floor before she passes out. Her ears are ringing, and she wonders if this is the shock of the situation finally setting in. She can’t tell if she wants to cry or laugh with joy. This is everything she wants, and she has no idea how to take it without shattering it like her previous life.

A throat clears somewhere above her, and she starts, looking up.

Hannibal stands just inside the bathroom. He’s shirtless, grey flecking the black hair on his chest. “When was the last time you slept, my dear Abigail?” he asks, and the words seem loud in the quiet of the night.

She shrugs. “A couple hours last night,” she says, and she can hear her accent coming through thanks to her exhaustion.

Hannibal lowers himself to sit next to her, his knees popping as he does so. It seems so incongruous for graceful, deadly Hannibal Lecter, but in the harsh light, she can see his age showing through. “And the night before?”

“A couple more.” There’s no use lying to him.

“Why did you not come to us if you have not been sleeping?”

She looks at him, letting her head loll to the side and a tired smile twist her lips. “You know why.”

“Perhaps, but I need you to tell me explicitly,” he says. “My goal is not to make you uncomfortable.”

She shakes her head. “It’s not like that. I just--” She bites her lips and tips her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Whatever you like,” Hannibal replies simply. “No matter what else this dynamic between you, Will, and myself is growing into, you are always welcome in our bed.”

She doesn’t have anything else to say to that. All she can do is close her eyes and let her exhaustion wash over her.

“Come,” Hannibal says, making to stand. “Let us go to bed.”

“I don’t think I can move,” she admits honestly without opening her eyes.

There’s a pause before she feels strong arms sliding behind her back and under her bare knees, and she only gets that momentary warning before Hannibal lifts her easily into the air. She nearly flails, but manages to gain enough composure to wrap an arm around his shoulders.

He carries her up the stairs, and she remembers abruptly that she’s not wearing underwear under her nightgown. Suddenly, the idea of Hannibal being able to smell what she’d been doing is much less appealing. Mortified, she presses her face into his neck, but if he notices anything amiss, he says nothing.

When he lays her onto the bed, the masculine scent of sex and sweat fill her nose.

As she finds her place between the pair of them, it doesn’t make her uncomfortable. It makes her feel like she belongs.


End file.
